Reading School District v. Department of Education, No. 04-2278 (Pa. Commw. June 6, 2005)
A Pennsylvania court has held that the Pennsylvania Department of Education's (PDE) administrative limitations on review of its adequate yearly progress (AYP) designations under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) violates Reading School District's (RSD) right to due process under the state constitution. When RSD sought administrative review of PDE's determination that six of its schools had failed to make AYP during the 2003-04 school year, its appeal was dismissed in accordance with a new state appeals policy. RSD challenged the designations on the grounds that PDE created an unfunded mandated, sanctioned schools that had not received federal funds, failed to provide Spanish language assessments, and failed to provide mandatory technical assistance. However, PDE's new policy allowed administrative review only when a district alleged that (1) the decision was made based on incorrect data; (2) significant progress had been made toward meeting NCLB goals; or (3) unforeseen circumstances prevented the district from making AYP. PDE therefore dismissed RSD's request for review for failure to state a permissible ground for appeal. RSD appealed the dismissal in state court, alleging that the new policy essentially renders PDE's implementation of NCLB unreviewable. The court agreed. First, the court found that the because NCLB implementation was reserved to states, it could not be challenged at the federal level, so that the new review policy made RSD's substantive claims unchallengeable at the state level as well. Second, the court agreed with RSD that PDE misconstrued NCLB by applying the law's appeals requirements for decisions by local school districts to those by state agencies. PDE created a non-existent distinction "between decisions made by an agency and those made by its employees" and developed a policy whose limits were inconsistent with those articulated in the NCLB. Accordingly, the court held that PDE "committed a clear violation of RSD's due process rights when it limited the grounds upon which RSD could appeal the Bureau's determination by intentionally misinterpreting the Act." The court remanded the appeal to PDE for a full review.
Reading School District v. Department of Education, No. 04-2278 (Pa. Commw. June 6, 2005)
[Link to full opinion][
Editor's Note: For background on the dispute, see below.]
[NSBA School Law pages on Reading lawsuit]